He also vehemently denied speaking to Russian officials about the election, during a campaign in which he was a close adviser to candidate Trump.

“I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States,” he said on Tuesday.

He is the most senior member of the Trump administration to testify before the Senate committee.

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Mr Sessions acknowledged he met Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak twice, but suggested he could not remember whether he met the envoy at a foreign policy speech event for then-candidate Mr Trump at the Mayflower Hotel on 27 April 2016, as US media have reported.

The former Alabama senator also denied media reports that he offered his resignation when Mr Trump was reportedly angered by his recusal from the FBI Russia probe, telling the panel he “will not be deterred”.

‘Evasive and fuzzy’ – Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington

Mr Sessions was often evasive and his accounting of details uncertain, littered with “I don’t recalls” and “I have no recollections”.

He is far from the first politician to seek refuge in a fuzzy memory under sharp questioning. Definitive statements proven inaccurate under oath are more prone to accusations of perjury.

When it came time to discuss his conversations with the president, Mr Sessions demurred, noting that he wanted to give Mr Trump the opportunity to review the question before sharing his thoughts.

It was as if the attorney general was trying to pre-emptively invoke executive privilege – the right of a president to candid counsel from his advisers – without using those magic words.

Where Mr Session’s memory does serve, he forcefully condemned allegations of Russian collusion as “appalling and detestable”.

The controversy at this point is about more than just collusion, however. It’s about obstruction of justice and the circumstances around the firing of an FBI director. In those areas the attorney general did little to turn down the heat.

US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Agency chief Admiral Mike Rogers, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were criticised for refusing to respond to some questions in a public hearing.